[ RadSafe ] Russians Worry About Terror Threat to Nuclear Facilities

[Marcel Schouwenburg]

Russians Worry About Terror Threat to Nuclear Facilities

By Simon Marks
VOA NEWS
Moscow, Russia
10 May 2005

You would not have been able to see images of Russian nuclear facilities 
just 15 years ago.

Not because they didn't exist, but because they were reserved for a 
handful of select eyes only.

The nuclear reactor at the Kurchatov Institute in the northwest of 
Moscow was once the pride of the Soviet
Union. When it opened in 1943, this facility was called simply 
"Laboratory Number 2" and had one goal:
the creation of a Soviet nuclear bomb. Today it's one of 11 nuclear 
reactors believed operational in the
Russian capital.

Robert Berls worries about the Kurchatov Institute. He directs the 
Moscow Office of the Nuclear Threat
InitIative -- a non-governmental organization jointly founded by Atlanta 
businessman Ted Turner and former
Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia.

"It's an institute where the U.S. Department of Energy first began doing 
upgrades of nuclear facilities, and
they have several facilities at the Kurchatov Institute. It's a 
relatively open facility, and a
group of terrorists could, I think, easily break into that facility if 
they tried hard enough. And God
forbid if they were ever to get to those research reactors -- what 
damage they could do and the horror
that could be unleashed on Moscow," says Mr. Berls.

In a bid to allay those fears, the Russians have been displaying some of 
the security measures they now
deploy at the Kurchatov facility, including special troop carriers that 
have been converted to monitor
levels of radioactive contamination in the event of any incident, and 
Emergency Ministry troops who are
kept on-site around-the-clock. A corporate video has also been produced, 
designed to set minds at rest.

We know with certainty that terrorists have at least considered 
launching an attack against the Kurchatov
Institute.

In October 2002, Russian troops stormed the Dubrovka Theater in the 
center of Moscow, ending a siege by
fighters from the breakaway Russian region of Chechnya.

For three days 900 theatergoers and performers were held hostage inside 
the building.

The Russians pumped a still-unidentified narcotic gas into the theater 
in a bid to end the siege -- the move
killed the Chechen hostage-takers, but also 129 of their captives. And 
while that very public military
operation was playing out live on Russian television, over at the 
Kurchatov Institute the Russians were
quietly busy.

Russian defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says, "A friend of mine, a 
person who I know rather well,
worked at Kurchatov, and was called in immediately to the facility as 
the tragedy in the theater was
evolving, to close down the biggest reactor. So when the Russian 
authorities see real dangers of nuclear
facilities being captured several miles from the Kremlin, they act. They 
act because the threat is
serious."

Alexander Pikayev has written extensively on the problems securing and 
safeguarding Russia's nuclear
stockpile. He says, "I would say it's simply a matter of luck. Simply a 
matter of luck because especially in
1990, the situation was so poor that one should be surprised that the 
worst-case scenario wasn't
realized."

"You cannot say, well, 50 percent is OK. Situation in 99 percent of 
facilities is OK. Because even if in one
facility, which contains probably less than one per cent of the 
dangerous nuclear materials is bad, the
amount of that nuclear material might be enough to make a bomb. So this 
is still dangerous," adds Mr.
Pikayev.

Both the U.S. and Russian governments have widely publicized the 
dismantling of elements of their
nuclear stockpile. Missiles are broken apart, the fissile material 
recovered, and then their parts
melted down for scrap. A U.S. congressional initiative -- the Nunn-Lugar 
Co-Operative Threat Reduction
Program -- succeeded in deactivating 312 Russian nuclear warheads last 
year alone. But there is an
enormous amount of work ahead: comprehensive security upgrades have not 
been completed on more than half of
Russia's potentially vulnerable nuclear material.

And defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says decommissioning warheads can 
create a raft of new
problems to resolve.

"Decommissioning means that they're dismantled. But the material that 
they're composed of didn't
disappear. That means it's stored somewhere. Most likely stored in less 
secure conditions than it was
when it was a nuclear warhead. So dismantling nuclear weapons is good, 
but that means that the material is
less secure as a result. It's not an easy situation, and it's made worse 
by a mutual lack of trust, by
ambiguity over the direction in which U.S.-Russian relations might 
develop," says Mr. Felgnhauer.

And U.S.-Russian relations, rocky in general over U.S. concerns about 
Vladimir Putin's rollback of democratic
reforms, are tense on the nuclear issue. The Russians won't allow U.S. 
inspectors to visit some of their
most sensitive sites. A response, they say, to Washington's refusal to 
co-operate with Russian
inspections in the USA.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discussed the 
nuclear issue with President Putin
and senior members of his government. In an appearance on a Russian 
radio station she was asked whether the
U.S. is infringing Russian sovereignty by seeking access to the 
country's nuclear sites.

"We do not consider, in any way, the inspections that need to take 
place, issues of sovereignty. These are
issues of cooperation, because we all need to be concerned about what 
happens as we dismantle the old
nuclear weapons arsenals," said Dr. Rice.

It isn't only disagreement over how to implement accords on nuclear 
security that are keeping Russia's
so-called "loose nukes" in the headlines. Those seeking a higher 
priority for the nuclear issue on the
U.S.-Russian bilateral agenda also point to strategic realities that 
they say are contributing to the delay
in bringing Russia's potentially deadly materials under control. The 
U.S. and Russia remain on
"hair-trigger" nuclear alert, still capable of mounting a nuclear attack 
on one another at a moment's
notice.

"That's a problem that can be resolved only at the level of heads of 
state, it cannot be done just by
confidence-building measures," says Pavel Felgenhauer.

So, on the 60th anniversary of the allies' victory in Europe at the end 
of World War II, it is falling to
President Bush and President Putin to try and advance the modern nuclear 
agenda.
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Marcel Schouwenburg - RadSafe moderator & List owner
Head Training Centre Delft
National Centre for Radiation Protection (Dutch abbr. NCSV)

Faculty of Applied Sciences / Reactor Institute Delft
Delft University of Technology
Mekelweg 15
NL - 2629 JB  DELFT
The Netherlands
Phone +31 (0)15 27 86575
Fax     +31 (0)15 27 81717
email   m.schouwenburg at tnw.tudelft.nl